Harry Jay Rubin and Peggy Cohen Rubin married on June 15th, 1958 at Temple Beth Israel of York, PA, the Reform Congregation of which my Great-Grandfather, Isaac, was a founding member. My parents were politically liberal but also priortized family values and self-discipline. Bud and Peggy Rubin were a faithful couple for over fifty-nine years. They instilled their moral values in their children through example and nurturing — no contract needed.
My talented, graceful, good-looking Jewish-American parents, Bud Rubin and Peggy Charlap Cohen Rubin — a devoted married couple — never accommodated America's everyday, anti-Semitic false stereotypes and never changed their names. Normalized anti-Semitic stereotypes are the worst form of anti-Semitism. The "intellectual, funny, neurotic, good-with-money Jew" stereotypes have gone on for centuries, internalized and promoted by too many Jewish People. Accommodating those stereotypes enables the violent forms of anti-Semitism.
My good-looking, talented and gifted — but overly humble and middle-class — Jewish-American parents were a faithful couple for over 59 years.
My parents were strong on family values and mind-body health. They discussed mental health openly, and they were physically fit. When we were at the shore each August, my Dad tended to gain 10 pounds or so enjoying my mother's excellent cooking, but then lose the weight in September. My parents instilled morality, core values, and self-discipline in us, leading by example, and through parental nurturing.
My Jewish Family represented Christian values and the concepts attributed to Jesus's sermons in the gospels more than those who loudly market their supposed Christianity. My family was an interfaith Jewish-Christian family going back to my grandfather's generation. His brother, my great uncle, Major Milton Cohen married Augusta Reitz, from a Pennsylvania-German Protestant family. Although my Aunt Gussie converted to Judaism — she was not forced to do so — we celebrated both Hannukah and Christmas at our home and Christmas at Uncle Milton's and Aunt Gussie's. In fact, Christmas was our big, annual, family-wide gathering. We are not born again Christians. We are a Reform Jewish Family, not traditionally religious, but proud of our Jewish heritage, and we embrace all aspects of real Judeo-Christian history, including the life of the real Jesus, Yeshua, a Mizrahi Jewish Man living in Judea, executed by Roman colonizers.
Career-wise, my Father was an Attorney. My mother was a Social Worker specializing in state-level policy reform. Simultaneously, my Father was a great clarinetist (beautiful tone, natural soul) with pro-level musical talent — as Ignatius Gennusa kept telling him, and my mother inherited her artistic talent from her mother, a Painter, and athletic talent from her father, an athletic politican. While my mother did not become an artist, she has natural rhythm and style and was a talented cook. Painting and culinary artistry are similar. Actually, the French cooking in our home was better than any meal we had at Le Benardin, Cafe Boulud, or any other restaurant we dined at when visiting Manhattan. My exceptionally talented but overly humble and generous parents were open-minded liberal reformers who worked within the American System, lawfully and peacefully, to bring about reform. They were not simplistically reactionary. They were not radicals.
I was raised to be both moral and open-minded, to excel on the basis of my own abilities, competing fairly, and to be self-disciplined in my professional and personal life.
How my parents became engaged in the 1950s:
My mother's brother, Donn Cohen, and my Dad were college friends at the University of Pennsylvania. My father attended Yale Law School, and Donn attended Harvard Law. My Uncle Donn referred my Dad to my maternal grandfather, Pennsylvania Attorney General Herbert Cohen, who hired my Dad as a Deputy Attorney General. My Dad was hired based on his exceptional talent and integrity just two years after graduating from Yale Law School. In 1956 my grandfather became a Justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, while my Dad remained in his role as a Deputy AG in the PA Department of Justice. Subsequently, my Dad met my mother, and they fell in love and married on June 15th, 1958.
Unlike some of the junior-high racketeers exploiting their sports world wealth, media power and network (while marketing themselves as humble Christians) to mob, bully and defame me and my talented, accomplished, but not wealthy family...
My very clean Jewish parents — Bud and Peggy Rubin — never needed to force their children to sign a contract promising to be good, sober, and get good grades.
